Samsung Galaxy S review

The competition in the smartphone market segment is heating up. And brand loyalty is becoming a thing of past in a market where you can hardly differentiate between devices which are launched in quick succession by the big brands.

The first half of this year saw iPhone 3GS getting some serious competition from Motorola Droid and HTC Desire. Apple then introduced the iPhone 4, which is now equally challenged by Samsung Galaxy S.

The high-end Android powered smartphones with large displays are there in the market to compete with Apple's iPhone 4's 'Retina Display' feature. In fact, Samsung Galaxy S comes with a whopping great 4-inch display!

The device also sports a 5 megapixel camera (but, without flash), HD video recording, 1GHz processor and video calling; the proper video calling that works over 3G, not something limited to Wi-Fi and communication with another phone of the same type.

Galaxy S displays a 480x800 pixels screen as against 640x960 for the iPhone 4, but it is bigger and brighter. Additionally, the device features its brand-new Super AMOLED screen technology which debuted with Samsung's first bada phone Samsung Wave. The Super AMOLED display shows bright, vivid, colours and has an awesome contrast ratio.

The device offers amazing picture and video quality, though a little overly saturated on the colours. Black is true black, as there's no backlight. Samsung has used OLED technology for years, but always proved difficult to view in bright daylight – which limited the usefulness of the camera. To cover this up, the device presents an extra 'outdoor visibility' mode, which is available when you power up the camera to bump up the brightness temporarily.

On the app front, only Google is somewhat near to match up with the number of apps available on Apple's App Store, so you can rest assured that there's bound to be an app for anything you want on Android. You will be slightly disappointed if you are a games aficionado as it lacks apps in this department, for now.

The first impression of this device will remind you iPhone 3GS. Samsung Galaxy S closely resembles the iPhone 3GS, but not as thin as the new iPhone. Besides a little bulge at the base of the phone, the Galaxy S is really thin (under 10mm) – and light too. The weight is kept down because of the use of plastic, which means you should probably get a case.

Similar to the Apple smartphone devices, Samsung too has kept the number of buttons to a minimum, with volume keys and a power/standby button the only things on the edge. You'll find the micro-USB socket and a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top. While, the camera sensor and a very small speaker is positioned on the back of the device.

At the front, you'll find two touch-sensitive keys for menu and back, and a centre push-button for home, or your task manager if held. Unfortunately, there's no direct search button as such. Overall, the phone looks really stunning -  doesn't matter if you think that a lot of the design cues are, erm, 'borrowed'.

You will need Google account to switch on and set up the device. Once you land on the home screen, you'll find a similar interface as that of any Samsung phone model which uses the TouchWiz user interface. Further, you will meet Android-like scrolling panels on the homescreen but somewhat like iPhone scrolling pages in the menu.

The handset offers three shortcut buttons at the bottom of the screen that remain on display at all times. Also, the pull-down notification page is almost standard-Android, but for some icons to toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and switch between silent and vibrate modes.

Samsung's front-end is no different to an HTC user having the Sense UI over the standard Google software. However, users have the option to change the homescreen layouts with a range of third party apps. However, if you would prefer to return to the more native Google front-end, you can easily do that with something like LauncherPro.

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